


like a scene from all those movies

by singmyheart



Series: let me be the place that you hide [10]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: F/M, LOVE and FEELINGS, New Year's Eve, Pegging, Strap-Ons, new apartment raps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-01 12:48:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singmyheart/pseuds/singmyheart
Summary: Lin's gotten pretty comfortable with bullshit. Not straight-up dishonesty, he’s always been a bad liar, but the charming, the putting people at ease, thewow, that’ssointeresting, please tell me more about the problem with free lunch programsthing? That, he’s mastered (swap “free lunch programs” for “urban farming” and you’ve got the patented Lin Miranda Strategy for Surviving A Bad Date, too).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [always_aaack_for_everlark7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_aaack_for_everlark7/gifts).



> so this is the sound of you  
> here and now whether or not  
> anyone hears it this is  
> where we have come with our age  
> our knowledge such as it is  
> and our hopes such as they are  
> invisible before us  
> untouched and still possible
> 
> —W.S. Merwin, "To the New Year"

 

 

 

The most obvious side effect of spending all of his formative years around politicians (and really the only one that plays well in interviews) is that Lin’s never going to be one himself. The second most obvious is that he’s gotten pretty comfortable with bullshit. Not straight-up dishonesty, he’s always been a bad liar, but the charming, the putting people at ease, the _wow, that’s_ so _interesting, please tell me more about the problem with free lunch programs_ thing? That, he’s mastered (swap “free lunch programs” for “urban farming” and you’ve got the patented Lin Miranda Strategy for Surviving A Bad Date, too).

No particular reason he’s thinking about this now, of course, other than the fact that the woman showing them this apartment is giving him a run for his money. She’s going on about natural light and granite countertops and graciously acting all the while like she doesn’t know who they are.

Lin’s not sure he likes that any more than the alternative, but what can he do. It’s kind of funny, actually, just makes him think about what they must look like: Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your average successful, well-dressed, young(-ish) couple finally taking the plunge. They’ve got three precocious kids and a golden retriever in their not-so-distant future, these two. And Pippa might be enjoying this more than he is — admittedly, he’s spaced out for the last few minutes staring at the view, so he’s got no fucking idea what they’ve been talking about, just knows she’s using her Interview Voice. As he rejoins them across the living room she’s saying, conspiratorial, “You know how men are. Clueless, god love him — I could answer the door wrapped in cellophane and he wouldn’t notice unless I was wearing a Mets cap.” On cue, he offers an _aw shucks_ kind of shrug and she laughs, perfect and hilariously insincere, tucks an arm around his waist. “Aw, babe. You know I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

He’s grateful for a few minutes’ respite, at least, when the agent excuses herself to take a call, apologetically, tells them to go ahead and take a look around.

“Cellophane,” he says, deadpan, when they’re alone. “Laying it on a little thick there, aren’t you?”

“Um, am I wrong?”

“I don’t know a sportsball. I’ve never seen a Mets game in my life.”

“That’s not a no,” she points out. Takes his hand in hers, tugs him firmly down the hall.

“I like this,” he says, in the bathroom, and indicates the shower, which is huge and glass-walled.

“You’re thinking about fucking me in it, aren’t you,” Pippa says, smirking. Tucks her hand into his back pocket.

“Well, I am _now…_ ”

“Sex-related convenience aside for a moment, you like this one? ‘Cause I like this one, a lot. I’m gonna have dreams about that kitchen.”

“I do, yeah.” He takes the aforementioned moment to run through his mental checklist: big enough for Tobi and Chaplin to avoid each other comfortably, for the third bedroom to be a study-slash-library-slash-yoga studio-slash-whatever. She could keep her little herb garden on the balcony, and none of the windows seem to have been placed where they are by accident or painted shut, as is the case with the one in the shower at her place. _And_ they’re still in Inwood, so he can look forward to the next however many years of jokes about how he’s never been south of the hundred-fifties. This place is definitely a contender, as far as he’s concerned. “Back to the sex-related convenience, though, let’s discuss what’s important here —”

“Stop —”

“I’m just _saying,_ ” Lin protests, butter wouldn’t melt. “You see that balcony? Think of the possibilities, Pip.”

 

*

 

So his life really, really does not suck right now. The holidays are fast approaching, and the thought of spending Christmas with her family in Illinois makes him vaguely ill in an adolescent sort of way — he still feels a bit like he’s about to ask them if he can take her to prom — but if that’s the worst thing on his plate, he can deal.

They’re both meant to be taking a real break from real work — and they are, if he doesn’t count the fact that Karen’s finally got most of an album in the can and wants him on a track, the weekend of FLS shows booked next month, the hints Rafael’s been dropping about the next Bars session, the handful of TV spots Pippa’s booked throughout the coming spring, and the script they’ve had dropped into their laps (some tiny indie film that any hypothetical future press would describe as a “marked departure” for them both; it looks promising despite that). The apartment search is actually going fairly well, and he’s _home_ for the foreseeable future: feels like he hasn’t put roots down for ages, hasn’t spent more than a few weeks at a time sleeping in his own bed without needing to be somewhere else, catch a flight, spend a weekend out of state filming something or charming someone or other into financing something or whatever, in quite a while.

 

*

 

Fall slips with little fanfare into winter, and December passes too quickly for his liking, like always, a blur of coquito and miserable weather and his dad’s terrible taste in Christmas albums. It’s good, though — Christmas Eve through Boxing Day with Pippa’s family is quiet, positively serene compared to the unmitigated chaos of a Miranda-Towns-Crespo gathering. They spend two nights sleeping curled around each other in her childhood bedroom, a little tipsy, and the anxious dreams that always plague him trying to sleep somewhere unfamiliar don’t come.

 

*

 

New Year’s Eve, they do at his place, with about as many people as can fit into the apartment without being literally on top of each other. Chris and Veronica show up with a bag of Christmas crackers, which is apparently the last straw for his poor dog; she passes most of the evening huddled under the pile of coats in the bedroom. Utkarsh and Daveed arrive in onesies and armed with a gallon jug of homemade eggnog so strong that just standing across from it has him looking for a lampshade to wear. It’s good, if hot and a little claustrophobic; he seizes the first opportunity to excuse himself that he can (his parents, rolling out the embarrassing childhood stories for an eager audience).

Karen’s up on the terrace, smoking furtively. When he says “hey, you,” she jumps about a foot.

“Fuck. Hey, yourself.” Caught red-handed, she looks incredibly guilty for all of a second, and then kind of resigned when he laughs at her.

“Fuck are you doing, smoking?”

“Trying to get detention.” She rolls her eyes but hands him the pack when he gestures for it, leans in to light his smoke, cursing quietly at the breeze kicking up. "Your dad's gonna kill me."

“You? Nah,” he says, and coughs. This is vanishingly rare; he hasn’t really smoked in years, but he lets himself miss it sometimes, when he’s been drinking. “He loves you, you know that. Just bat your eyelashes at him and you’re off the hook.”

“It’s true.”

“Me, on the other hand, he would readily murder twice, and I don’t really want to make Pip deal with that. Not without a little warning, at least.”

“Fair enough.” Karen crushes the remains of her own smoke under her boot, and she’s smiling, almost to herself.

“What?”

She shrugs. “Just… you seem happy. And she’s — you look good together, you know?”

“Thanks, Kar,” he murmurs, lets that hang between them for a minute. They turn and look out together over the dark glittering expanse of the city; Karen shivering, up here in nothing but a flimsy leather jacket, the wind ruffling her hair.

“Anyway,” she goes on, suddenly brisk (good old Karen, she’s almost as bad as Tommy when it comes to grown-up human feelings), “I’m freezing my tits off, man. Hurry up and finish that, would you?” Turns her collar up for all the good that’ll do, hugs herself, and then gives up and hugs him around the waist instead, crowds close; he has to crane his neck a little to avoid blowing smoke directly into her face.

“In the interest of preserving your tits, I’d just like to point out all of the exactly zero obstacles currently preventing you from going back inside —”

“Fuck off. God forbid you just like, say a normal sentence for once in your life, right —” And then she stops dead, having shoved her hands past his unzipped jacket and into the pocket of his sweater.

“By all means,” he says, dry.

She pulls out the little velvet box, blinks down at it for a second, and then slugs him in the shoulder so hard he knows it’d go numb if it weren’t already minus a million degrees up here. “ _What._ Seriously?”

“Nah, just thought it’d be a fun prank. It’s actually chocolate, go on, bite it and see.”

She fumbles the box open with numb fingers, whistles. “Damn. This vintage?”

“Yeah, deco. Mid-twenties, maybe, Kail said.” She flicks an eyebrow at him, surprised. “Right? Apparently Ange is picky. Who knew.”

“It’s gorgeous.”

“Think she’ll like it?”

“Yeah, she’ll like it. Lin — Jesus, kid.” She looks up at him, shakes her head, and he tucks the box carefully back into his pocket. “When’d you grow up, huh?” she asks, soft.

“How dare you. I would never.” She laughs as he flicks the end of his smoke in the general direction of the old-ass coffee can near the door and misses, and then she hugs him properly, and hard, arms flung around his neck. “You know,” he goes on into her hair, which has that particular wintry, cold-air smell clinging to it, squeezes back. “For the longest time I thought if I was gonna put a ring on anyone’s finger, it was gonna be yours.”

“Oh, _fuck_ you —”

“I’m serious —”

“I know that, you dick, I mean — you did propose to me. Do you not remember?”

“Oh, holy shit, I did — wait. Did I actually ask, or did I just —”

“Okay, no, if I recall correctly, what you actually said was,” and here she affects what’s obviously a wildly off-the-mark (and unflattering) impression of him, drops her voice an octave, “y'know, Olivo… if you’re like, single when you’re like, forty, I’ll marry you.”

“Missed it by _that_ much. How much Patrón went into that conversation, you think?”

“Not nearly enough.” She huddles still closer; he won’t be surprised if she starts trying to climb into his sweater in a minute. Can hear her teeth chattering above the wind.

“Listen, you hear that? That’s the sound of me punching twenty-six-year-old Lin-Manuel in the dick, repeatedly. So young, so foolish, so convinced of his own sexual prowess...”

“Get in line.”

When they head back inside he ducks into the bathroom to brush his teeth before rejoining the party (and to steel himself a little, admittedly; this feels weirdly like stage fright. Thank god he knows how to deal with that). Has to hop up on a chair in the living room to get everyone’s attention, waves them quiet. Utkarsh tucks a dollar bill into his waistband, which Lin is not giving back, thanks very much. “Yeah, it’s that time of the night, folks. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here —” Laughter, a chorus of groans and half-joking insults. “No, no, I’m kidding. Simmer down. It’s coming up on midnight, so I just wanted to say… thanks, I guess. For being here. Now, and always. I love you, we love you, and here’s to another year. May the universe be a little kinder to us all this time around… well.” He rocks a hand back and forth, hums. “Maybe not me. I dunno if you guys know this, but things are just fuckin’ gravy for me, lately. And on that note — hey, Pip?”

She sticks her head out of the kitchen doorway, looking a little harried. “Sorry, dishes — you people are animals, honestly —”

“Leave the dishes, babe. C’mere for a sec.” Karen’s grinning fit to burst. Tommy too, and Angela; nobody else quite yet. Just keep it together, Lin, for like thirty more seconds.

“Sorry, sorry,” Pippa’s saying, “I only heard like, half of that. Whatever he said, I agree.” Laughter, and again as she emerges fully and gives him a Look, presumably for the chair thing.

“Well, that bodes well, I guess,” he mutters, stepping down. His dad off to one side, phone up. And he can feel it dawning now, people starting to sense where this is going. Pippa’s probably onto him, she’s so smart, looking like she doesn’t quite know what to do with her face as he takes her hands in his. “Hi, honey.”

“Hi.” Eyebrows. _Is he drunk,_ she mouths at Daveed, exaggerated.

“I was just telling everyone how great things have been going lately, for me. You might be aware, that’s in no small part thanks to you.”

“I could say the same,” she says, wry.

“Look, if you’re just gonna _interrupt_ me —”

“Right. Sorry. You were singing my praises, go on.”

Laughing at himself Lin swipes at his eyes, already tearing up, throat thick, deep breath. “So while I have you here — god. Fuck. I had this all _prepared,_ okay, I wrote out a thing, I was gonna be all suave and articulate, there were notes and everything. I made sure to use only the good words, but — okay. You. Hi.”

“Hi.” Ha, she’s welling up.

“I said, didn’t I, that falling in love with you seven times a week? Easiest job I ever had. And there are a lot of words I could use to describe the last few years, but easy isn’t one of ‘em. Between, you know, writing a show, and trying to get Weird Al to stop calling me — he’s so needy, you guys — and. Well. The dark time, of which we do not speak…” She’s smiling, and it’s the usual fond Lin’s-crying-again smile but it’s something else, too. “Moving on. Imagine my surprise when I figured out I’d _also_ managed to fall in love offstage. And passing over the ‘taking my work home with me’ joke…” He doesn’t take a knee, and she doesn’t do the cliche trying-not-to-fuck-up-her-makeup handwavey thing. Bright-eyed, teary, not a goddamn wreck like he is. Stoic. That’s my girl, he thinks. “I don’t wanna come home to anybody but you. Wherever you are, that’s home. I love you so fuckin’ much, Pip. Marry me?”

She’s saying yes almost before he’s finished. The ring fits perfectly.

The whole thing is kind of a blur; he has to piece these couple of minutes together later from the photos, from the video his dad takes: lifting Pippa off her feet to kiss her, then a quick and slightly shaky pan around the room to show at least half of them crying, the close overheated crush of hugs and kisses that leaves both of their cheeks covered in lipstick. Pippa tearfully cursing him out for making her cry in front of everyone they know.

The two of them sing a tipsy duet just before midnight and then the champagne comes out and the ball drops in Times Square, and after “Auld Lang Syne” he consents to being dragged off the piano and having some of that sinister eggnog poured down his throat. A lot of people say a lot of heartfelt, sincere garbage, and he spends most of the evening with Pippa anchored to his side. More than once he catches her looking down at the ring, biting down on a smile.

Eventually everyone starts to wind down and filter out; carpools are arranged, cabs called, and the drunkest handful of people crash on the couch, the floor of the study. At long last it’s just the two of them again, quiet settling over the apartment like a blanket. A few stray champagne flutes soaking in the kitchen sink, the last lukewarm scraps of food scattered over the counter. Pippa’s hunkered down on the bedroom floor when he comes in, trying patiently to lure Tobi out from under the bed with treats. Half-undressed; she’d probably gotten distracted. “I’ve had enough,” she protests, token, when he offers the remnants of a bottle of champagne, long gone flat, but takes it anyway. They pass it back and forth until it’s done and she half-crawls into his lap, rests her head on his thigh.

“I think she might just live under there now,” he observes, gives the bag of Milk Bones another halfhearted shake. “Like, this is it, she’s not gonna recover.”

“Mhmm,” Pippa agrees, sleepy and young-sounding.

“C’mon. We gotta go to bed. I’m too old to sleep on the floor.”

“Mm.”

“Baby. Don’t fall asleep. Bed now, time for bed.”

“‘M not asleep.”

They don’t get into bed so much as collide with it. Lin knows he should have at least a glass of water, brush his teeth — he’s going to regret this later, wake up with a dead arm and a stiff neck, try not to nod off and drown in the shower. But that’s later.

Now, his phone’s glowing softly on the bedside table, showing past 3am, January 1. Next to it the bag of treats just begging for Tobi to knock it down and destroy it, mash crumbs into the carpet. His wallet, the red velvet ring box, now empty, and his chain, coiled neatly and glinting a little in the dim light. His restless filthy sprawling neon city outside the window, his first love best love, his New York in all its steel and concrete splendor. Pippa curled around him with a ring on her finger older than either one of them, maybe older than either one of them will ever get to be, her breathing deep and steady. She’ll want bagels in the morning, carbs. He’ll go out into the frigid gray morning for bagels and good strong black coffee — but that’s morning. Still hours away. Maybe danishes, too, Lin thinks, and closes his eyes.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

**sometime in 2016**

There are certain things you don’t learn about someone until after you start sleeping with them (aside from the obvious), and Pippa’s pretty confident that she can call this one of them — that Lin’s a hell of a cook, when he bothers to do it. He’d coaxed her awake with promises of coffee, and she’d trudged out into the kitchen to quite the spread: bacon and eggs, sausage, hashbrowns (he claims he’d told her he was running out to pick up fruit, but she can hardly be blamed for not registering it; she’d barely opened her eyes for that conversation).

He’s kind of hovering, now. “You want anything else? More coffee?”

“Will you sit,” Pippa says, laughing. “If I eat anything else, you’re gonna have a Mr. Creosote situation on your hands, and neither one of us wants that. Let’s try to keep the mystery alive a little longer, maybe?”

“Hot,” he says, straight-faced, but sits. Reaches across the table to pick at the last scraps of her bacon. She yawns, wide enough that her jaw clicks, and he grins at her. “Wore you out last night, did I?”

“Oh, don’t be gross.”

“You haven’t _seen_ gross, Pip.”

“I’m scared of what that could mean, I’m not gonna lie to you.” A moment’s lull, more comfortable than awkward. That’s something else she couldn’t have predicted, wouldn’t have guessed about him — these little pockets of silence that sit between them now and again, when they’re alone.

“So,” he says, “I gotta go run a couple of errands this afternoon, walk the dog. Nothing riveting, but you’re welcome to come with, if you want?”

She considers it, runs her tongue absently across her teeth, reminding herself that she really should go home, shower — they’re not quite at “wearing his clothes out in public” territory and she hates the stale next-morning kind of feeling. And she could do with a few hours of alone time, anyway. “I’m gonna run home, I think,” she says, edging toward apologetic, which she knows is stupid.

“Sure,” he agrees easily. “See you at work, then.” She nods and he smiles and they lapse back into easy quiet for a while. “You know,” he goes on, sips his coffee, leans back in his chair. “You can leave some stuff here if you like. Toothbrush, change of clothes, whatever.”

Well, she hadn’t been expecting that. “Really?”

“If you like.”

“Yeah, okay. Cool.” It’s — it’s a little soon for this, probably. But she doesn’t care.

“Cool.”

 

 

*

 

**present day**

Somehow — there’ll be studies done, someday — the sex has gotten both more frequent and better since the engagement. They’ve always had a hard time keeping their hands off each other anyway, but lately it’s a wonder they’re getting anything done. Pippa’s sure they’ve got some kind of glow, the smug and perpetually just-fucked satisfaction of the recently engaged. She’s just said as much and Lin looks her up and down from across the table, smirk firmly in place. “That a complaint?”

“One of these days I’m gonna get sick of you. Just you wait, it’ll happen,” she warns, any hope she might have had of making that statement believable undercut by the fact that she’s wearing his shirt and nothing else (save for the giant vintage diamond on her left hand). Kicks her feet up into his lap and downs the rest of her coffee, pulls the paper toward her to take a stab at the crossword.

“On the subject…” he murmurs, from behind his own mug. “That — ah. That thing we discussed. You given it any more thought?”

“I — oh. Really?” There’s only one thing he can mean and suffice to say she hadn’t really anticipated discussing it over her waffles.

“I mean, I have,” he says, clinging valiantly to his casual tone and also blushing furiously. “Not that — not right this second, or anything, but if it’s on the table…” Goes on when she doesn’t cut him off, rambling a little. Oh. He’s nervous. That’s adorable, god, she loves him so _much,_ which is why she keeps the very stupid comment that instantly springs to mind regarding the phrase _on the table_ to herself. “Y’know, I figured I’d lock you down first, get you to marry me and _then_ break out the weird shit, right —”

She does cut him off, a finger to his lips, which makes him laugh. “Lin. Just — let me think about it, okay?”

“Please do,” he concedes, drops a kiss on her knuckles and looks up at her grinning, self-consciousness not quite bled out, although it slips into something else when she shifts to straddle his lap.

“That said,” she goes on, “‘locked down’ is a pretty strong term. Engagements can be broken, you know…”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Lin promises, splays a hand across her back. Eyes dancing.

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“That’s ‘cause I am.”

Results are predictable.

(A goddamn _wonder_.)

 

 

*

 

 

The problem with the Thing They’d Discussed, Pippa soon discovers, is that she can’t fucking _stop_ thinking about it. It had come up a while back, months (“I kind of always wanted to try it,” Lin had said then, “just never happened”) and nothing had ever come of it, for no real reason — but he’d brought it up again recently, and she figures she might as well give it some thought. She’s not _opposed_ , or anything. More to the point, she’s learned to recognize the signs when he really wants something.

Most of the porn they dig up featuring said thing doesn’t do much for either of them: what isn’t actively horrifying is silly at best. They kill an hour one evening wading cautiously into some far-flung reach of Tumblr and are about to give it up when a video thumbnail catches her eye. It’s only about a minute long, normal-looking couple in a normal-looking bed; no faces, no dialogue that they can hear, just his breathless sounds, the faint squeak of bedsprings.

“She kind of looks like you,” Lin observes, in the mild tone that means he’s Thinking. Pippa can see it: slender and dark-haired, the way she catches her partner’s wrist when he tries to touch her and pins it firmly to the mattress, flash of a smile just visible at the edge of the frame. Yeah, she can see it.

 

 

*

 

 

She can see it soon after that, too, on a rare lazy Saturday morning. She so appreciates times like these, when she can wake him with a leisurely blow job and just roll around for a while, sun-soaked and easy. She gets him running his mouth, before he’s quite awake enough to get in his head about it — he’s thought about it, too, he tells her. About getting himself ready for her, taking whatever she gives until he can’t remember his name, whatever, whatever she likes —

 

 

*

 

 

Not long after that she has to resort to drastic measures to get Lin off Twitter: just reaches across the bed and plucks the phone from his hand. What starts as a kind of affectionately exasperated, giggling tumble in the sheets escalates, in the usual fashion.

They've both had personal trainers kicking their asses into shape lately, the product of a shared New Year’s resolution — it's paying off, she's happy to note. The phone’s forgotten now, out of reach. Lin’s put up a respectable fight but she’s got him now, his wrists in her hands and he pulls, theatrical, just to test her grip. His grin wicked when she pushes back. Tilts up a fraction, angling for a kiss but he waits. She thinks fondly of their first kiss, first real one, offstage — his dressing room at the Rodgers, the air thick with the promise of it and him the inveterate flirt suddenly reticent. His tiny quiet noise of surprise when she did the out-of-character thing and decided for them both; his hands hovering, not quite touching.

That caution had, of course, long ago melted out, in favor of the firing-on-all-cylinders full-speed-ahead attitude with which Lin approaches most things (which is a quality in him she’s always admired and slightly feared, and which has never disappointed her when it comes to the bedroom).

When she does kiss him he meets her with a ready hunger, and it all fades into the easy, familiar slide of sex, haze, taste and scent and sensation. It's not until he's hard and leaking in her hand that she scrounges up the courage to ask — something about the way his breathing hitches, the long exposed line of his throat, makes her bold, and she says, “You wanna?”

Lin goes so still that she panics for a second, drags her mouth from his neck to look him in the face. “Yes,” he says. “Yeah, I — yeah. Do you?”

“I do,” she assures him, and it takes an effort not to laugh when his next kiss goes fierce. It'd be cruel to laugh at him now, when he wants this so much — and he's never laughed at her, after all, not through all of the anxiety and baggage she's hauled into the beds they share. Admittedly it's a little more difficult to keep from laughing when she's got two fingers in him and he's still kind of trying to hide from her, face turned into the pillows, eyes closed. They don't do this often and this is exactly why: it's vulnerable, aimless, makes him nervous. Always takes some time for his walls to come down, and that’s just him all over — always throwing himself into things and hanging back at the same time, that fearless wholehearted commitment that runs counter to the low background hum of anxiety.

(She can’t even fuck anymore without mentally composing an essay about it. This is what she gets for falling in love with a writer.)

“Hey,” she says now, soft, like he’s a scared animal. “Where’d you go?” It’s what he’d always used to say to her, in the early days. She can pretty much match his tone and expression, too. Drops a kiss on the inside of his knee, rests her chin on it.

On cue he says, “I’m right here, angel.” Laughs a little strained and beckons her down for a kiss, and that’s familiar, deep, lazy.

She kind of really does want to laugh once she’s gotten her shit together and gotten into the harness; it looks a little silly, but the thought flies out of her head when she looks back at him: he looks nothing short of reverent and she feels — well. Worthy of it. His fingers dotting light touches up her spine, over her hips, the plain leather straps; he touches the slim black dildo like he’s testing if it’s real, appraising. His own cock brushing up against it as she kisses him again and he sighs, lets her nudge him back down to the mattress like they’d been a minute ago. “Like this?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, “yeah, this is good.” A moment’s shuffling to get where she needs to be, the fine hair on the backs of his thighs tickling the tops of hers. He watches her intently while she pours more lube into her palm and slicks the strap-on with it, his eyes on her hands. “Well, I’m gonna take _this_ mental image right to the grave. Christ, babe.”  

“Don’t tense,” she reminds him and he nods but visibly relaxes, trying to still his hands twitching in the sheets.

It’s strange, the reversal — obviously she can’t gauge his body’s response with her own the way he can when he fucks her — so she stays careful. Keeps her movements slow and small, terrified of hurting him in a way he doesn’t like, these gradual little incremental thrusts; seasons have changed, glaciers moved, by the time she’s all the way inside. Starts to fuck him in earnest and he’s quiet, which would worry her more if he didn’t look like he was on another plane of existence — she’s not even sure he’s breathing but she’s having some trouble in that department herself at the moment. “Good?” she asks anyway, just to be sure.

“I don’t hate it.” She rocks her hips forward an inch, experimental, and his eyes roll back in his head a little.

“You look so good,” she tells him, remembering how much she'd admired his straightforwardness, at first; how easy it seemed for him to say what he felt and wanted, when her experience with talking in bed had been so stilted and uncomfortable, before him. She's realizing (or she’s always known, on some level) that everything is just _better_ with Lin, simpler and brighter and more fun, just _more._

And he does look good, tilting his hips up to meet her — between the two of them manage to hit on that magic rhythm-angle-pressure and there’s nothing formless or hazy about this, all dizzyingly sharp, tenfold, electric. She won't be able to come like this, she knows, not the right kind of pressure, and she doesn't care because he's _lost_ , drowning. A couple of times he tries to say something and chokes on the words, and she can't help making up the difference herself: how fucking good this feels, how good he looks, on his back for her, taking it. “ _God,”_ he bites out; the hand that lands on her thigh is sweat-slick, the other trying to tear holes in the sheet, his chest heaving.

“This what you wanted?” she asks, carried right along with him now, chasing her own orgasm building even as she knows it'll evade her like this. “You like this?”

He manages a yes and then surprises her: “Harder,” he gasps, “c’mon — fuck me harder —”

His own hand on his cock and her thighs just starting to protest the effort as she does, goes harder. His whole body drawn up taut as he comes, so hard it hits the underside of his chin, streaks his chest wet and white. Noise squeezed out of his throat. “Nononono, fuck, it's okay,” he assures her in a rush, half-slurred, before she can stop, “I can — it's good, c’mon —” Well, that's rare, and a request she can't refuse: so she keeps it up and even through the cloud in her head is kind of concerned about overdoing it but it happens in short order. Mostly dry and smaller than the first but he comes a second time, still pretty fucking hard from the look of things, fuckfuckfuck _fuck,_ Jesus, Pip, oh my god. She wonders vaguely if it's the same for him, the wrung-out scraped-raw feeling of the body wanting more than it can handle.

He looks like a goddamn oil painting, skin shining with his own come and sweat and lube. Drags her tongue through the mess on the way up to kiss him; it does something to the angle and he jerks, oversensitive and half-laughing but he meets her, kisses her sloppy.

She pulls out of him as carefully as she can manage; he sighs, collapses back. “Give me a minute,” he murmurs, hand over his eyes, waves vaguely with the other, “and I'll — yeah.”

“You sure?” she says, as she unbuckles the thing with shaking fingers and lets it drop to the floor with a thud so he knows. “Cause I could just…” Reaches down to touch herself lazily, a lack of urgency definitely faked, feeling where her skin's gone all soft sweating under the leather. “Take care of this myself.”

Lin makes an indignant noise, looks over at her. She's kidding, but — “Babe,” he says, soft. “Let me.” They look at each other for a moment, Lin still panting, smile playing around his mouth, and she leans on her clit a little harder, moans. Not entirely faked. “Baby,” Lin repeats, wets his lips. “Come on.”

She rolls over to straddle his thighs; he looks satisfied and then a little confused when she grabs his wrist. “Ask pretty.”

“Can I, babe? Make you come? Lemme touch you, please,” he murmurs, low, like he isn't already, because she's not exactly putting up a fight. “God, you're _soaking,_ ” he marvels and she is, slick frictionless slide for a second before his fingers find purchase on her clit. There’s nothing she can say to that, doesn’t need to; god, why do they ever do anything but this. He’s everywhere, his mouth on her neck now, chest, _fuck_ but she’s always appreciated a man who can multitask and tells him so, and he laughs, hooks an ankle over hers. He’s so warm and grinning feral and he knows her, pushes inside her so easily just as she’s about to ask, just in time for the flex and drag of her cunt around his fingers as she comes and he’s watching her face, hears him say _yes, yeah, look at you_ as if from far away.

They don’t get out of bed for a while.

 

 

*

 

 

Saturday night winding down into Sunday morning, spring oozing into summer. The new living room a forest of bubble wrap and boxes still half-packed; Pippa lets herself imagine she can still smell fresh paint. Case of beer sweating in the cooler next to her, on the floor; they’ve put a pretty decent dent in it. Lin’s out on the balcony and she can hear him talking nonsense to Tobi, a little punch-drunk (and a little actually drunk).

They come back in and Tobi trots ahead of Lin to curl up directly on top of Pippa’s feet and settle down. Lin looks as exhausted as she feels, in his worn-out henley and dusty jeans; he appears to consider pulling out a couple of folding chairs but he’d have to dig them from behind a stack of boxes to do that (how they’d ended up like that, she has no idea), and then says, “Nah, fuck it,” and half-collapses next to her instead. A few minutes of comfortable silence before he starts to freestyle unprompted about the new apartment, state department, gonna get carpal tunnel from movin’ all these fuckin’ boxes, fiancee’s a fox, and then something about having bagels and lox for breakfast and how nothing rhymes with breakfast before he gives up. “Don’t put that on Twitter,” he mumbles into her thigh.

“I wouldn’t dare,” she promises. “I’m embarrassed for you. You won a Pulitzer.”

“Prefaced,” he says, with conviction. “Freshest? Checklist. God _damn_ it.”

“Whatever happened to that rhyming dictionary someone sent you?”

“Bite your tongue,” Lin mutters, darkly, and she laughs. Quiet settles between them here, with spring dragging itself reluctantly into summer — there’s a breeze off the Hudson, and the windows are open.  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was written in thanks for a generous donation to RAINN. title from "A Heart in New York" by Simon & Garfunkel.
> 
> you know where to find me.


End file.
